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I'm been wondering this for a while, is there a reason why we don't use Symbolic Links for our launchers?
It would help a lot in terms of speed when using the rename + copy, copy again + rename method most of our launchers use.
Instead of copying once, and copying again, create a symbolic link and remove it.
Stability: symlinks and junctions on NTFS can be a little unstable at times.
File system: FAT/FAT32 doesn't support symlinks.
Hi, what do you mean by saying they can be unstable at times? I tried googling, but couldn't find anything at all. I'm using them for a while in my private projects, but so far, they seem to work well and I found no issues, that would scare me from using them. Thanks
This has been asked and answered a number of times. Symbolic links are Vista/7-only. NTFS junction points are required for 2000/XP and aren't well-supported. It requires NTFS and nearly all flash drives are formatted as FAT32. And there are permissions issues with it all on different PCs.
Okay, thanks Chris and John. I searched but there wasn't a thread telling why we didn't use them.
FAT doesn't have to support them, NTFS can link to it anyway.
(Sorry for bumping an old topic, I didn't realize editing would do that)
Junctions are not only for 2000/XP, they work in Vista and Windows 7 as well. And as was already stated, flash doesn't need to have NTFS - only volume where you put the link, which will be nearly always the system drive and it will usually be NTFS. So why not try to create symbolink link / junction first and only if that fails, do it the other way (copying)? It would take some more checking, but would eliminate the need to copy anything in majority of situations. Are there any other reasons, I am missing?
The symlink should be a native option for expert developper.
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